With summer in full swing it’s time to celebrate my kings and queens of the fruit realm: stonefruit. Central Otago is the stonefruit capital of New Zealand, a place where our bleakest winters are perfectly juxtaposed against our hottest summers. Our stonefruit varieties love these brutal annual temperature variances which allow the plants to shift their seasonal lifecycle gears and develop that unique flavour fully. From freezing winter dormancy, to spring flowering, to blistering hot summer ripening and a dry autumn harvest, that’s what Central Otago does best. It’s the best in the world, too. You just have to know where to get it!

I’ve paid a long-awaited visit to Jackson Orchards for A New Zealand Food Story. It’s a fourth-generation family-run and -owned orchard business in Cromwell and it’s New Zealand’s largest apricot exporter. I have been buying directly from Jackson Orchards for many years now. The ability to find and take a couple of scoops out of the export-grade food market for the restaurant is, in my view, the life or death of a dish.

The cricket-ball-sized Vulcan apricots have to be seen to be believed and eating one can only be described as living well.

My hosts for the day are owner Kevin Jackson (who is now in his 80s), his partner Julie Tait, daughter Kristin Nolan and her teenage son (Kevin’s grandson) who is aptly named Jackson (and will without doubt be the sixth generation of this family of orchardists – conveniently it feels the place is already named for him).

The orchard is beautiful and it’s not just about the apricots: it is home to more than 100 varieties of fruit that start producing from mid November with cherries, right up until mid May with pip fruit.

The Jackson family were the first to plant fruit trees commercially in the region. The original property was located in the Cromwell Gorge, but that had to make way for Lake Dunstan and the Clyde Dam. The new property was bought in the late 80s right next to the new lake. Located on State Highway 6, just out of Cromwell on the road to Wānaka, Jackson Orchards’ packhouse is a fruit hub, with tourist activities including accommodation and the electric fruit bus.

The bus is the perfect way not only to check out this massive place, but also the only means to experience the seasonal fruit dégustation. A snapshot in time, it offers a bite of every variety of fruit ready right now, picked from the tree. I am excited as I feel like a main character in my favourite children’s story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The first stop is the nectarines. Picking a nectarine from the tree, I roll it in my hand and feel its temperature. Warm and ripened by the sun, it feels soft like a water balloon ready to burst. I marvel at the colouring; the side of the fruit that faces the sun is a deep crimson red, the shaded side is a beautiful yellow. I have to bend over to take a bite, just to save my shirt as the juices drip from my chin. I somehow feel closer to God.

This moment sets off a chain reaction as a hundred ideas for a new dish ping through my ADHD brain. I’m temporarily lost in a nectarine dream of sorts. Grilled or raw? Duck sausage, pork fat, almonds, raspberries, black pepper, allspice, ginger… this is living pure New Zealand.

Belly full with summer gluttony, we circle back to the packing shed for some more magic. Young Jackson takes me through the grading process and he handles the conveyor belt like Luke
Skywalker, manning a camera that takes 60 photos of all sides of each piece of fruit in one second! Unbelievable. The tech allows Jackson to check each piece of fruit for quality and zoom in on the picture, sort of like Google Earth for stonefruit. This kid is the future, proof that the stonefruit doesn’t fall far from the tree at Jackson Orchards.

Now, here’s the kicker. When you buy stonefruit (or any fruit or fruit vege such as tomatoes) in the supermarket in New Zealand, it is never ever picked ripe. Supermarkets and fruit wholesalers value both ease of shipping and low purchasing prices over flavour. The growers value the export market over the local market because they make more money – fair enough. So ripeness is last on the list of priorities of everyone. Therefore flavour is last, too, because once the fruit is picked underripe from the tree, that’s it; the fruit will eventually soften and become edible but the flavour will always be lacking.

It’s the way it is here in New Zealand, and we can’t complain about it because it’s our decision to shop that way. That’s why at Ahi we buy direct with great Kiwi producers such as Jackson Orchards. It’s pretty simple, just a mid-season conversation over the phone, “What’s ready?”, “What’s great?”, “Please send me a box”, “Thank you!” Of course, it is not life and death, but in my view the difference between an OK dish and an exceptional dish is less about the skill of a chef and more about having a great relationship with your supplier.

At Jackson Orchards they only pick when the fruit is ripe, even if they have to pick the same row 10 times. Life is just too short to eat shit stonefruit. jacksonorchard.co.nz

Cuisine proudly partners with A New Zealand Food Story. See more about this story in Season 4 Episode 6 on TVNZ+.